Afghanistan wave 4

Aid Pakistan COIN CP

The Pakistan sanctuary problem is a serious challenge to Afghanistan. Seth Jones of RAND has tabulated a number of cases of past civil wars in which an insurgency had assistance from the outside. When it had direct help from a foreign government, insurgencies won fifteen out of twenty-nine wars and achieved partial success in another six. When an insurgency had substantial outside support from nonstate groups-and the Taliban and other Afghan militias certainly have at least that-insurgencies won eight of twenty-five campaigns and achieved some of their goals in another eight. (By comparison, governments won eleven out of eighteen wars that Jones studied when the insurgency did not have outside help.) 18

In fact, the Taliban insurgents still appear to enjoy some direct help today from elements of the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate of the Pakistani Army. The lSI may view the Taliban as a useful hedge in case the current war effort fails, allowing Pakistan to ensure a government friendly to its interests in Afghanistan at that time.¹⁹

Part of this dynamic is the unfortunate legacy of a Pakistani state has long viewed insurgent groups, even those willing to use brutal and terrorist methods, as worthy partners. In addition to wanting to avoid an India-friendly government in Kabul, Pakistan has also used its proxies in Afghanistan to train extremist fighters intended ultimately for operations in Kashmir. To the extent that Pakistan is beginning to change its views toward terror as the essence of its own state is threatened by some of the movements, the situation may change. But that will surely take time. Even today, Pakistan is much more apt to target what it considers either Pakistani Taliban or Arab fighters in its midst and disinclined to attack Afghan Taliban or groups like Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (which are often asked to rename themselves, given a short period of penitence after a major attack against India, and then effectively rehabilitated).20

Stanford professor Steve Stedman's important work on ending internal wars reaches conclusions similar to those of Jones. Overall his focus is more on conflicts ended by negotiated accords than on wars in process-but his work on why peace accords sometimes fail is still relevant, for it highlights the fault lines in these kinds of conflicts. He identifies three main sources of a renewal of warfare-spoils, spoilers, and hostile neighbors.21 Spoils are riches such as diamonds, of which Afghanistan has relatively modest amounts, although its capacity for opium production may play a similar destabilizing role in some ways. Spoilers of course are dedicated foes of any peace accord, and Afghanistan would seem to have those in spades. Finally, hostile neighbors are a major problem, and they are what is at issue here. If Pakistan does take its own insurgency problem, as well as Afghanistan's, seriously in the coming years, this concern will be mitigated. But again, Stedman's research highlights the inherent dangers to Afghanistan if that does not occur. Afghanistan has one huge advantage over most of the cases in Stedman's study-the large number of international resources being devoted to its problems.

To address the sanctuary problem more effectively, three more initiatives may be useful to consider, beyond the welcome and overdue military operations that Pakistan has carried out in 2009. First, an "EZ pass" system could be created to facilitate and regulate movement of vehicles and people at main crossings along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. This would not stop all infiltration, but it would tend to facilitate legitimate flows and thereby free authorities to try to counter illicit flows, pushing more of them to remote regions where it would be harder to move weaponry as well as large numbers of fighters. Second, political reforms should be made in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas-Seth Jones suggests lifting the strict regulations on political parties there (which effectively cede turf to extremist religion-based organizations) as well as possibly incorporating the region more formally and normally into Pakistan's polity.22 Third, greater economic development efforts should be made in the tribal areas-followed by tracking public opinion to know how the population feels about these kinds of efforts and their success. Such tracking can help identify those parts of a strategy that are working and those that are not and allow adjustment in policy as needed.

Lobby Pakistan to Disband the Quetta Shura

It remains a huge paradox that, even as Pakistan and the United States collaborate against some common enemies today, even as Pakistan allows American logistics operations to traverse its territory en route to Afghanistan, even as American aid to Pakistan grows rapidly from its typical recent levels of $1 billion or so a year, Pakistan continues to aid and abet enemy forces. The most blatant way in which this continues is through the country's ongoing tolerance of the so-called Quetta shura. This is the headquarters of the Afghan resistance, and much or even most of it resides, meets, and operates from within the capital of Pakistan's Baluchistan Province.

The United States has been right to try to work with Pakistan despite such divided loyalties in Islamabad. Not all officials in Pakistan approve of support for the Quetta shura or other related activities that occur within their territory. In addition, Pakistan has felt betrayed by the United States itself in the past, going back to a cutoff of arms sales in both the 1970s and 1990s, and as a result it has felt it must hedge its strategic bets. The Taliban represent a pro-Pakistan group thatcould again seize power within Afghanistan, ensuring that a government relatively friendly to Islamabad would run that country if the NATO mission fails and the current Afghan government crumbles. Given Pakistan's worries about having two troubled fronts, one along the border with India and the other to its north and west, some of this tolerance for the Taliban was probably unavoidable-at least within elements of the lSI. This Pakistani interest in maintaining "strategic depth" in the direction of Afghanistan is militarily unnecessary. But it has had considerable sway in Pakistani strategic and political circles nonetheless.

However, the situation can change with time. As the years pass, as U.S. aid to Pakistan increases and is sustained, as American unmanned aerial vehicles kill extremist Pakistani leaders like Beitullah Mehsud, as top American military officials and civilian leaders build up relationships with Pakistani counterparts, a truer security partnership becomes possible. It will not be realistic to expect that each and every pro-Taliban element of Pakistan's ISI will abandon support for that group. However, it may be possible to ask Pakistan to place the Quetta shura under a form of house arrest. By limiting the activities of this group, and perhaps dispersing its members throughout the country, Pakistan could save NATO and Afghan lives and give us a better chance to win the war. If the U.S. commitment to Afghanistan wavers in the future, Pakistan will always have the option of allowing the Quetta shura to reconstitute so that a friendly regime will again have the means to seize power in Kabul as well as southern and eastern parts of Afghanistan. Over time, this kind of deal should be increasingly reasonable to consider-or at least discuss-among American and Pakistani counterparts, and every effort should be made in that direction.